The crowning of Pranab Mukherjee and other excesses

On Wednesday Pranab Mukherjee was sworn in as the 13th president in one of the most expensive and meaningless ceremonies that India specializes in every once five years.

The limousine parade, the horse guard, the banquet, and the rest of the glittering, chandeliered stuff that goes with a ritual like this went unquestioned as usual because Indians tend to be decorous even if it hurts them, as this occasion must. What matters if we are a little poorer for the event? From the look of it, at least the president and the laundered politicians in attendance were having a good time.

Mukherjee is a congress party leader, who has clearly all through his career done more for his party than for the country, unless we mistake one for the other. As a minister and congress leader he has always done the bidding of his bosses, be it Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi.

No one has used the powers at his command more to snare and suppress the detractors of the party. There is a long list of men who are legally and financially discomfited because the diminutive Mukherjee for long has been the toughest bouncer on the block. And a sort of pundit at financial policing. The country has never really featured as his priority in any of these exploits, or at least not as much as partisan politics.

Mukherjee’s recent stint as finance minister is now widely accepted as lackluster at best, disastrous at worst. Indeed, in retrospect, the annual comedy of his budget speeches in a version of English — a curious Birbhum variant of Bengali — now makes for clinically depressed reading.

Because he has been around for so long in powerful positions, the media has tended to humour him. And unquestioned in his wisdom, and in the fullness of years, Mukherjee has grown up unreservedly admiring his own ways. This is a very righteous man indeed, which partly explains why he gets angry fast.

Now as president, he really can’t be questioned at all, right? Both the party and the media have packaged him as some sort of an eccentric darling of the masses which he most certainly is not, exactly as Manmohan Singh is not.

On Wedenesday, Mukherjee confirmed his dedication to the cause of sloganeering, a genetic specialization of the Indian politician which this country generally encourages. In his acceptance speech, for example, he said, “terrorism was the fourth world war.” What’s new?

An Indian president saying terrorism is a major threat is meaningless. It is like Bhupuinder Singh Hooda, Haryana CM, saying that the parched and power-strapped Gurgaon needs a life. What was Mukherjee doing when he had the power to change the agenda?

The trouble is Mukherjee’s inane discovery of the terrorism threat comes at a certain price, which you are paying even as you watch him. Coming to think of it, why this ornamental acceptance speech at all? It makes sense to have one if the President-elect is not accepting the honor.

Among the other pearls that Mukherjee cast in the general direction of the universe on Wednesday was that poverty must be eradicated, or some such. And who among us well mannered, matrimonially minded Indians—father gainfully employed, mother pious– will say, “No, no poverty must not be eradicated?” His whole speech was strewn with such Samaritan sentiments and commonplace discoveries. And how delighted we were all to be privy to it.

If India must have a president — which is a highly debatable if — surely it argues for the downsizing of the institution’s pomp and rhetoric? For a poor, starving country, whose current president swears that “we must lift those at the bottom” with leftist economics, the theatrical regalia associated with Rashtrapati Bhavan ought to be an eye opener.

That we watched the well-oiled vulgarity on TV, and the morning after read it in the papers just in case we missed any nugget, goes to show our copious talent for appreciating bullshit. And that in one word was the ceremony all about.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

CP Surendran is a journalist and columnist. He is a senior editor at The Times of India and is based in Delhi. Surendran is also the author of four volumes of poetry: Gemini II ( Penguin Viking), Posthumous Poems (Penguin), Canaries on the Moon (Yeti) and Portraits of the Space We Occupy ( Harper Collins). His poems have been widely anthologized in India and abroad. His first novel was the critically acclaimed An Iron Harvest. His second novel, Lost&Found, is due for release in October.

CP Surendran is a journalist and columnist. He is a senior editor at The Times of India and is based in Delhi. Surendran is also the author of four volumes. . .

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Author

CP Surendran is a journalist and columnist. He is a senior editor at The Times of India and is based in Delhi. Surendran is also the author of four volumes of poetry: Gemini II ( Penguin Viking), Posthumous Poems (Penguin), Canaries on the Moon (Yeti) and Portraits of the Space We Occupy ( Harper Collins). His poems have been widely anthologized in India and abroad. His first novel was the critically acclaimed An Iron Harvest. His second novel, Lost&Found, is due for release in October.

CP Surendran is a journalist and columnist. He is a senior editor at The Times of India and is based in Delhi. Surendran is also the author of four volumes. . .